Elon Musk is waging war on a key check on his business empire

Elon Musk bought Twitter in 2022 with the hopes of turning it into “the everything app” that will let users zap money to each other and where they could eventually conduct their “entire financial world.”

Elon Musk bought Twitter in 2022 with the hopes of turning it into “the everything app” that will let users zap money to each other and where they could eventually conduct their “entire financial world.” Days after Musk attended President Donald Trump’s inauguration this year, Twitter, now known as X, made its first major step towards building a financial ecosystem. X CEO Linda Yaccarino announced the launch of a digital wallet and peer-to-peer payments platform in partnership with Visa, to be launched later this year. Now, Musk is at the forefront of the effort to gut the primary federal financial regulator overseeing the payments business: the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. “RIP CFPB,” Musk posted on X last week, with a tombstone emoji. Hours later, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which is led by Musk, deleted the CFPB’s X account and was granted access to the consumer watchdog’s systems, a person familiar with the matter told CNN. Since then, the CFPB’s acting director has instructed employees to “stand down” from all work – including fighting financial abuse. All of this is alarming consumer advocates and ethics experts, who say there is a glaring conflict of interest between the world’s richest person simultaneously presiding over the shutdown of the CFPB while also owning businesses that would benefit from weakened financial regulation.